


Wildflower Honey

by MistysGatorTeeth



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternative Timeline, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, One-Sided Attraction, Period-Typical Homophobia, Runaway Bride, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:42:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27378169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistysGatorTeeth/pseuds/MistysGatorTeeth
Summary: Dani's dealing with having to plan a wedding she's not entirely sure she's ready for, while also trying to convince herself she is. What's the worst thing that can happen after she wanders into a flower shop and ends up befriending the woman doing the arrangements?..An alternative timeline with no manor, no ghosts - but things still haunt them, nonetheless.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Edmund O'Mara (One-sided), Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 10
Kudos: 74





	Wildflower Honey

They catch her eye from the sidewalk outside. Pretty flowers with tissue-like petals that lay softly against each other as they huddle closely around the center of which they sprung from. Their long fuzzy stems tickle Dani’s fingertips as she brushes against them. There are droplets of water that sparkle like flecks of glitter clinging to the greenery and they dampen her skin. It’s just pasted only six months to  _ the  _ date, and Eddie’s mother has been calling her just about daily and sending magazines filled with bouquets and dresses to their apartment weekly. But, yet to her future mother-in-law’s dismay, Dani simply isn’t in a rush to envision a day so far away.  _ Things change,  _ Dani thinks as her fingers tighten on her purse strap,  _ people’s feelings change.  _

Oh, how she wishes her own will. 

“Fancy some help?” The voice makes Dani startle. Her shoes squeak on the tile when she turns tightly to look behind herself and find a face to the voice greeting her. Blue eyes bolt around; they linger on the vases of lilies and bunches of daisies. Settling on the woman stepping around the counter, Dani’s lips part as she tries to fumble for her own sort of hello. Dani looks at her apron with a neatly embroidered version of the sign above the door, and the navy blue bandana tied into her curly brown hair.

“Hi.” Dani blurts. “Hi,” She tries again, a little less anxious, a little more friendly as she smiles a toothy grin and starts to explain, “I just- I saw these from the window, and they’re very pretty.” She turns back to the flowers she was enchanted with, knuckles bumping against the leaves. 

“I reckon they are,” The lady agrees, nodding her head slowly and returning Dani’s smile with one of her own. Hands dug into her pockets pull out, and she offers one with an introduction, “I’m Jamie, by the way. Those are my  _ very pretty  _ flowers.” 

_ Her accent is nice.  _ Dani shakes her head, wonders why her thoughts had focused that amongst them to the front of her mind. She clasps Jamie’s hand in her own, probably shaking it a little bit too tightly. “I’m Dani.” She bites her lip as their palms part ways. Her own land on her hips and she admits with a shy expression, “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“Highly doubt you would with the winters here,” Jamie informs her. She steps to Dani’s side; her fingers grasp one of the stems right under the flower head. She shakes the water off the flower as she pulls it from its place on display. “Ranunculus. Fussy little bastards, they are.” The sunshine from the wide front window bounces off the flower’s creamy peach coloring, the fade of pigment from the tip of the petal to the base. “Though I do agree they are quite nice and  _ moderately  _ worth the trouble.” 

Dani lingers on all of Jamie’s words. Jamie notices it, and her smile is easy and kind, “What? Haven’t you ever heard of a British person before?” She teases. She leans back against the sturdy floral stands, eyes appraising Dani as she assets her reaction to the joke. 

“No, no - I mean  _ yes,  _ I have. Actually, I nanny two kids. They just moved here from England, actually.” Dani reasons, and she does account in her head how odd it is at the rate she’s running into people from across the pond. “Their parents, they died.” Dani frowns then and she seems Jamie visibly wince at the admission, and she looks away as she adds to recover the conversation from a particularly sorrowful pit, “They’re with their uncle now, and he’s usually working, so I’ve been helping them transition to America as best I can.” 

“So I’ve had a modern-day Mary Poppins just  _ pop  _ into my shop.” Jamie states. She twirls her fingers and the flower spins easily as she stares down at it in her hands. Though her smile is dimmed from the whole  _ dead parents  _ thing, she still looks up at Dani through her eyelashes, “Lucky me.” 

“I can’t carry a tune, nevermind a whole movie.” Dani retorts. 

Her fingers hold out the pinched stem to Dani. Jamie quirks her eyebrow, tilts her chin towards her floral offer, “Well,” She smirks, “Pretty flower for a pretty lady, I suppose.” 

Pink paints Dani’s cheeks, over the bridge of her nose. She’s entirely too nervous all of a sudden, though if she’s honest, she has been since Jamie stepped over to help her.  _ Help her.  _ Dani should be asking her, right now, if she does weddings. Eddie’s mother would be over the moon to find out she’s actually done  _ something  _ related to their holy union. But Dani doesn’t, Dani cannot. Her tongue presses to the roof of her mouth, and she  _ tries,  _ “I actually was needing- or I  _ wanted  _ to ask you if you…” 

“Wedding?” Jamie finishes her sentence, she makes a meaningful glance down at Dani’s left hand, at the modest rock adorning her ring finger. Jamie sighs. If Dani were to want to read into it, she’d almost guess it was a disappointed one, but surely no florist would be discontented over making such a large sale? “I will admit, I had you marked as  _ funeral  _ when you first wandered in. Didn’t really get the blushing bride with you.” 

_ Is that concern lining her thinly veiled words?  _

“Nerves.” Dani laughs out, unsteady, the same thing she’s told just about everyone who’s called out her odd behavior. Every relative, however distant they are. Her friends that she clings to from high school, barely finding time for coffee now, all of them with children starting to cling to their ankles. 

“Ah, the wedding jitters.” Jamie rocks back on her heels. She doesn’t seem too convinced, and it’s the first time someone actually hasn’t believed her. Though Jamie, with the dirt on the knees of her jeans, seems to read through the layers of her without even lifting the cover of the book. Silence settles on them like a flannel blanket over a lap. Jamie moves though, and she pulls out a little rectangular card from her back pocket. Green lettering reads  _ The Leafling  _ across the top and a number that shares her area code underneath. “I’m just about closing up for the day, yeah?” Jamie tells her, “But you give me a ring, and we’ll settle on a time to go get a cuppa and talk over this wedding of yours.” 

Dani leaves with her apricot tinted ranunculus, a business card, and too much to think about on a Friday evening. 

..

“That’s pretty.” 

The mason jar is cold in Dani’s palms, and the water slouches around inside the glass as she walks it over to the nightstand on her side of the bed. Twirling around along the rim is her freshly cut flower; though it doesn’t give off a fragrance, the trimming of the stem does make her nose fill with a fragrance, not unlike that of freshly cut grass. Eddie reads a book, his glasses on the tip of his nose as she looks over at him and regards his comment. The flower is beautiful, yes, but Dani cannot help but dislike the way he brings up the inevitable question. “For the wedding?” 

“Maybe.” She replies. It’s not that she isn’t excited. She’s  _ so  _ excited. Her heart fills so much when she sees her husband-to-be. She remembers, as a kid when their mothers had sent them to a summer camp together and Eddie’d ended up sitting on the sand of the lakeshore instead of canoeing with the other boys - all because she didn’t much like being out in the water. 

Eddie looks out for her, she  _ loves  _ Eddie. 

Though when she sits on the bed, and she feels him shift and hears his book shut with a resounding thump, Dani finds herself shrugging him off as he pulls her blonde hair from her shoulder to kiss it through the fabric of her pajama shirt. “Eddie,” She says his name quietly, turning to pull her knees up off the floor, to tuck her toes under the edge of the blankets. She loves him, she does. It’s only- It’s just- “It’s been a long day.” She finalizes. Dani can’t help the guilt that crawls up to nest in her chest, right under her ribcage, and rubbing her heart.

“Kids giving you trouble again?” Eddie asks, and he’s the perfect gentleman. He sits back, pulls her against his side to comfort her. She couldn’t have found a more perfect guy, she knows that. Her eyes feel heavy, and she steadies her gaze on the flower sitting on the nightstand, under the warmth of the lamp. 

“Miles put a frog in my coffee this morning,” Dani recalls. She clicks her tongue against her cheek, “Flora decided to run the bathroom sink over trying to make a  _ swimming pole  _ for her dolls. Her cloth dolls.” Dani rolls her eyes, “I think they hate me even more after I put those things in the dryer.” 

“They don’t hate you.” Eddie reminds her softly, he rubs his thumb against her shoulder. “You’ve only been working with them for what? Three weeks?” 

“Four, now.” 

“A month and you haven’t pulled your hair out yet,” He jokes. Outside the streetlights flicker, and the shadows they cast across the room can bring out the scariest part of the dark. Dani loves Eddie, he’s  _ there.  _ She isn’t alone. “That’s going a bit better than last year,” Dani remembers her classroom. Paper cut out apples, strings of the alphabet, dreaded parent-teacher conferences. Though it’s hard tutoring such troubled, it’s infinitely better for her mental health. 

Eddie’s  _ good  _ to her. She loves him. 

She won’t let herself think about it too hard, so she falls asleep, with the soft click of the lamps turning off. Her eyes falling shut, looking at the lines of petals in the flower standing steadfast beside her. 


End file.
